


desiderata (things wanted or needed)

by psycho_raven



Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series, Final Fantasy XIII-2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Changing the Timeline, F/M, M/M, Threesome - F/M/M, noel erases himself so Serah doesnt die and everyone is happy, they all love eachother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 22:06:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13645383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psycho_raven/pseuds/psycho_raven
Summary: "You knew it." Snow doesn't sound angry, no. Noel thinks for a moment that he wouldn't have any right to get angry anyway, but the idea lasts only a moment when he realizes that he really looks sad.(Noel erases himself from the timeline so his two favorite persons can have a happy ending. He never saw himself in his good dreams anyway).





	desiderata (things wanted or needed)

**Author's Note:**

> Thene is my angel and helped me translating this one!! I owe her my life and tons of fics of her AC!D lesbians. 
> 
> also, how is possible that fanwork of this OT3 doesn't exist? shame, people, shame.

 

“I wish,” is all that Noel says, and his words hang in the air like the dust raised by the claws of the Chocobos when they run through ruins and barren land. Serah clasps her hands together and looks at him sideways, waiting for Noel to finish saying whatever he has in mind, but it stays unfinished, in the expectant silence of the end of the road, only interrupted by the incessant pounding of blood in their ears. Two hearts pumping at the same time, alive, still alive.

(Later, or further back. When there is only the flash of a reminder and the memory slips away from their hands like water to get lost in the ocean, then she will rest her tiny hands on Snow's firm arm and the word 'wish’ will sound endlessly blue).

He demurs with a gesture as if putting aside an idea that already is beginning to take shape. "Enough rest? We have to continue."

"Mn-hn, we are getting closer..." Serah doesn't ask further questions, she just lets the words stay between them.

\---

 

His wish?

 

Serah sleeps in the improvised camp, her back barely forms a small shadow against the fire that crackles when Noel moves the logs to stoke the flames. Somewhere, two meters of impetus and life and a lot of things that make Noel's chest feel tight awaits her. Snow's smile appears in the flames that lazily illuminate the night. It makes sense to him that the two best people he knows love each other as they do.

He asks, then--

About the love and arms of someone who waits. Noel fans the fire a little more and the sound of the singed leaves makes him think of something warm. The gesture of moving his arm makes the sockets of their bracelets ring. He thinks of Caius, of Yeul. It's the longest night, yes.

Noel looks at Serah out of the corner of his eye and remembers Snow's voice too close to his ear. The goosebumps in the skin of his arms like when he spent hours crouching in the undergrowth, waiting for the first false step of a prey that would ensure food for a week. But then he feels in its place, Snow's hair tickling against his cheek and Serah's gaze on them.

He realizes that it would have been enough to be there to see them happy. But anyway, this should have to be enough. Under the stars and with the fire in his hands, Noel doesn't sleep that night.

 

\---

 

The decision hangs in his eyes as a sad longing and Serah knows which future it is that Noel wants so strongly. She feels tears burn in her own eyes with the realization that it is one in which he doesn't exist.

But Noel turns with a smile, his chest full of love. He would have liked to attend the famous wedding so much.

 

(You have a wish.

He closes his eyes and feels the cool breeze against his face, the air filling his lungs and a peace he didn't remember knowing, except when;

\--Snow laughing and Serah at his side, almost hidden under his strong arm, the vision of his back cut against the landscape and the incessant restlessness of the farewells, of the gestures that meant to move away. But the bright smile and to never ever lower his head--

You have a wish.

It is a voice that he doesn't recognize, that speaks from somewhere within him. And if it comes from within him then it knows exactly what that wish is.

Once again, in another time. In another life.)

 

She had already asked him, once, what he wanted. He had answered that he wanted a future. If she asked him again, his answer would be the same, but;

with you both.

 

It's still the same answer in essence so Noel opens his arms and smiles. "We still have a couple of things to fix before it's time to say goodbye." Serah thinks that it's not less death for it being announced, but Noel passes his thumb along her cheekbones still wet with tears. "There's no place to doubt, Serah, you have Snow waiting for you."

\---

 

Noel didn't see himself in his dreams anyway. He saw the others. Then he started seeing Serah and Snow. But he never managed to conjure his own face in those dreams, as if he saw them in first person, but through a glass whose cold touch allowed him the clarity and the security of knowing he was right.

But he never saw himself. That must have been enough clue, maybe he already knew. From the very beginning.

Snow's voice in his ear: We are not so different. And that same certainty tightening his heart. No, we are not. That last revelation while discovering that he isn't able to remember how his own face looked. But oh, how well he remembers theirs with the first rays of dawn sliding over his bare skin.

\---

 

"You knew it." Snow doesn't sound angry, no. Noel thinks for a moment that he wouldn't have any right to get angry anyway, but the idea lasts only a moment when he realizes that he really looks sad.

Another thought, Snow should never look sad.

He nods.

"Since when...?"

"A while now, it was my decision."

"There must be another way, there is always another way--"

"Maybe, but this is the one I chose, the one that assures that you two--"

"You never, ever talked about 'us', it was always 'you two', you never included yourself in that future."

Noel pauses for a moment, Snow's look troubles him inside his chest, in his stomach. It makes him want to run, scream. He wishes he’d met him before everything went to hell.

"I had a story already, you know? And you were not part of it, besides ... it had a sad ending, but the Goddess gave me this opportunity, I got to know you and--"

"It’s not enough!"

Noel doesn't tell him that maybe it never is. But when it's all you could have expected to have, it is enough.

"I was happy, Snow."

Serah swallows, watching the scene from a distance with her heart clenched. Even far away she feels the ground tremble when Snow hits the first flat surface he finds. But it comes from sorrow and not anger because he knows, he knows that he would do the same.

"I had so many things to tell you, I was going to introduce you to the others and--"

Noel laughs, his laugh is sincere and Snow suddenly thinks of fireworks.

"You have to make every second count, Snow."

\---

 

They do it because the timeline takes a whole day and night to line up again. Like gears that suddenly remember in which direction to turn, how to fit, one by one moving again as if the whole world took a deep breath and the future began again, like an old animal that stretches before walking one more time. The past erasing itself as it drags the segments that accumulate on the blank sheet.

Noel closes his eyes and thinks of a painting he has never seen, a painting made of ocher colors that remind him of autumn in Gran Pulse when the earth was alive and breathing. He rubs his hands and feels how the details begin to disappear from front to back, and only spots remain like stubble on the paint that he conjures up his head.

"It's not the same, right? Dying and ceasing to exist." Snow sits next to him on that last summer night. Then the beach awaits. Lightning, the wedding, the friends, the cat, the sand, the waves wetting their always muddy boots. But for that night (Every night of your world should be yours, all summers and evenings too), that night belongs to the three of them. Snow by his side like a mountain under whose summit he would always wish to sleep, and Serah on the other side with her small head resting on his shoulder and her curls of pink hair sliding like a cascade down the skin of his forearm.

 

"No, it's not, but don't expect me to know the difference either."

 

He feels alive like this, even when he can't remember his grandmother's face or the exact color of the walls of the hut in which he lived in a past whose future doesn't exist now.

He pays attention to the brush of his hands against Snow's big fingers and the way Serah's hair tickles him as she adjusts her weight against him. Those are the details that make him feel every second is his.

 

"Nobody knows that, I think."

 

Snow doesn't look forward in the same way Serah doesn't separate herself from the warm heat of her body attached to Noel's. It is a desperate attempt to not forget him, nor the features of his face or the soft touch of his skin.

(Noel doesn't really care, if he ceases to exist then they will never have known him and there will be no memories to keep. It's not their fault, a part of him tells with certainty that the memories are truly inside their hearts. This happened, I lived, and I felt and existed with you, that is forever, even if the future I want for both of you is one in which that didn't happen.

 

It's his way of saying he loves them).

 

They talk all day until they have almost no voice. Soft words like secrets that murmur among the three. There are also laughs that make birds fly from the treetops. They say everything until there are no words left.

Then they let the silence enhance the senses to memorize each gesture, especially the sound of surprise when Snow kisses him first, then Serah. After that he is not able to identify of who are the lips, the hands, his back against the ground and the touch of the leaves against his skin when they undress him.

(Snow and Serah show him that they love him with their hands, with their tongues, it's their way of saying thank you, sorry, forever and always).

The sun is about to rise when Noel knots the leather bracelets on Serah's arm and lets his collar tinkle when he places it on Snow's neck.

\---

 

Sometime later, when Noel is just a fragmented memory of a love that lingers like the sound of the leaves that gently fall in autumn, a love that Snow and Serah believe belongs only to each other. Even then the leather will remain tied to their skins as the desire for something impossible but that was so worth it.

And they will look at it and feel a melancholy that is confused with affection. And they will believe that it was a gift that was once made by the other. And maybe it was in some sense. And they will not know why it makes them sad, but somewhere in their hearts swollen with love, they will understand and remember the boy with the eyes of heaven.

\---

 

Your wish, you see.

 

Noel closes his eyes and it's the last thing he thinks, even with their bodies tangled. Even after Caius and Yeul, his last thought is about them.

 

I wish.

 

In a future that is built on every bit of him erasing itself, where people live and dream and love and come back to life. In that place, he would like to be born again to meet them again. To never have to go back to say goodbye. Just by harboring that desire in his heart he knows himself blessed by the Goddess because he knows then that his life was not a tragedy full of sacrifices.

The warmth of Snow's arm around his waist and Serah's lips still pressed against his back. The breath of both as a breath of life inside their lungs, that is only the end of their triumph.

\---

 

Icarus was not failing as he fell, they say. A flash and then nothing more.

Snow cannot explain the tears when the sun sets, it is autumn, the stones of the necklace that he keeps tied to his neck next to the engagement pendant clink together and his son’s firm hand squeezes his fingers. The thanks he still owes to someone. The life that will not be enough to live with gratitude.

His name, he remembers without being able to vocalize exactly what name it was, meant gift.

 

 

 


End file.
